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Call for public agencies to use state properties

The Labor Ministry on Monday declared its intention to issue an open call to all public entities, ministries, state corporations, local authorities and universities for the utilization of 120 buildings in central Athens that belong to social security funds and have remained unused for years. The ministry also has a pilot plan to make use of 24 emblematic properties in the capital’s historic center.

The overall project for the utilization of properties will be implemented within the next few years, with the scientific and technical contribution of the National Technical University of Athens’s School of Architecture. It has emerged that out of a total of 1,126 assets that are owned by the country’s social security funds, just one-fifth are actually being used. Almost half of them (49 percent) remain empty.

Sources say that interest has already been expressed by ministries, such as that of Agricultural Development and Food, which, in order to put all its scattered agencies under one roof, intends to use a building on Syntagma Square that belongs to the Single Social Security Entity (EFKA).

Particular significance is attributed to the utilization of 24 historic properties, via an architecture tender that is not expected before early 2018.